‘Nigeria divided like never before under Buhari,’ Soyinka agrees with Obasanjo

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, said on Tuesday the country was more divided like never before under President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership.

The playwright’s statement came just five days after ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo shared the same sentiment on the state of the nation.

Obasanjo had said at a public forum in Abuja last Thursday that Nigeria was becoming a failed nation under the present administration and rallied the citizens to stop the country from tumbling from the cliff.

And in a statement he personally signed and titled: “Between ‘Dividers-in-chief’ and Dividers-in-law,” Soyinka said though he was not a fan of the ex-president, he “embraced any accurate reading of the country as a contraption teetering on the edge of total collapse.”

He said: “I am notoriously no fan of Olusegun Obasanjo, General, twice former president and co-architect with other past leaders of the crumbling edifice that is still generously called Nigeria. I have no reasons to change my stance on his record. Nonetheless, I embrace the responsibility of calling attention to any accurate reading of this nation from whatever source, as a contraption teetering on the very edge of total collapse.

“We are close to extinction as a viable comity of peoples, supposedly bound together under an equitable set of protocols of co-habitation, capable of producing its own means of existence, and devoid of a culture of sectarian privilege and will to dominate.”

He also reminded Nigerians on his advice to the government to heed the warnings by the ‘ex-president over the self-destruct turn that the nation had taken at a forum last year.

READ ALSO: Nigeria drifting to a failed, badly divided state —Obasanjo cries out again

Soyinka added: “That advice appears to have fallen on deaf ears. In place of reasoned response and openness to some serious dialogue, what this nation has been obliged to endure has been insolent distractions from garrulous and coarsened functionaries, apologists, and sectarian opportunists.

“The nation is divided as never before, and this ripping division has taken place under the policies and conduct of none other than President Buhari. Does that claim belong in the realms of speculation? Does anyone deny that it was this president who went to sleep while communities were consistently ravaged by cattle marauders, were raped and displaced in their thousands, and turned into beggars all over the landscape? Was it a different president who, on being finally persuaded to visit a scene of carnage, had nothing more authoritative to offer than to advice the traumatised victims to learn to live peacefully with their violators?

“And what happened to the police chief who had defied orders from his Commander-in-Chief to relocate fully to the trouble spot – he came, saw, and bolted, leaving the ‘natives’ to their own devices. Any disciplinary action taken against ‘countryman’?

“Was it a spokesman for some ghost president who chortled in those early, yet controllable stages of now systematised mayhem, gleefully dismissed the mass burial of victims in Benue State as a ‘staged show’ for international entertainment? Did the other half of the presidential megaphone system not follow up – or was it, precede? – with the wisdom that they, the brutalised the citizenry, should learn to bow under the yoke and negotiate, since ‘only the living’ can enjoy the dividends of legal rights?”

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